History of writing quiz: from cuneiform to the printing press
From Sumerian tablets to the Orkhon inscriptions, from the Rosetta Stone to Müteferrika's press: how well do you know humanity's five-thousand-year relationship with writing? Ten questions.
Writing was the first technology that carried human words beyond the speaker and beyond their lifetime. This quiz has ten questions running from clay tablets to alphabets, from deciphered mystery scripts to the spread of printing. Every answer is a well-documented fact historians agree on.
Which people first developed cuneiform, one of the oldest known writing systems?
Which people created the consonant-only alphabet regarded as the ancestor of the Greek alphabet?
The Orkhon inscriptions, written in the Old Turkic script, stand in which present-day country?
Who announced in 1822 that he had deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, working from the Rosetta Stone?
Who deciphered Linear B, the script found on tablets in Crete and mainland Greece, in 1952?
Which Chinese court official is traditionally credited with improving papermaking in AD 105?
In which city was Johannes Gutenberg working when he developed movable metal type printing in mid-15th-century Europe?
Which ruler commissioned and proclaimed Hangul, the Korean alphabet, in the 15th century?
Who founded the first press to print books in Turkish in the 18th-century Ottoman Empire?
In which year did Turkey adopt the new Latin-based Turkish alphabet?
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